Gas pay action gains momentum

Press

FUND DAYS TO RAISE £764.48 WILL WE do It? It is now getting very close to the end of the month and we have a long way to go yet. Over these next seven days help us do everything possible to puil the position around.

We know it is a tough struggle. The huge Increase in the cost of living has greatly hit the incomes of all our readers. But we also realize this this onslaught by the Torles has made everyone even more determined to fight back in every way.

This Tory government should be warned. The main issues have still to be fought out with the working class. In such a situation, the Torles must be made to resign.

In the forefront of this fight. All our efforts must be turned therefore into a big campaign to complete our Fund this month. Take a special collection at work. Try wherever you can and raise extra amounts. Post all donations immediately January Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High St London SW4 7UG. strike yesterday.

The stoppage, which began last Friday in south Lancashire, spread to depots in midChestir, Norwich and Crime. covering Crewe, ford.

Pickets from strike areas also went to Preston to try to persuade colleagues there to join in.

Other work disruptions occurred in Liverpool and Blackburn where North Sea gas conversions have been slowed down.

Most of the North Western A LIVELY and attentive audience packed into the Pentrebach Labour and Social Club, Merthyr Tydfil, on Tuesday night for the opening of the pageant campaign, "The Road to Workers' Power.

Following the cabaret, South Wales campaign, pageant was all about.

The basic democratic rights of the working class are being taken away by a crisis-ridden government, he said. The defence of these rights was facing the whole labour and trade union movement.

He explained that these ctors and actresses participating n the cabaret were not part o an artistic 'showcase'-they were WORKERS POWER ND BASIC LIVING STANDARD TICkET E1 Gas Board area is affected by some form of industrial action or other.

Workers in the Southern Gas Board service depot in Reading, Berks, began a week of 'nonco-operation', affecting Wokingham, Wallingford, Henley and Basingstoke.

The action will mean a delay in service work, but no loss in gas pressure, said a gas board spokesman.

Fitters were on strike at Wakefield, Castleford, Pontefract, Roy Battersby, who is directing explained to the audience what revolutionary fighters in the workers' movement.

He then invited local people to come forward and help prepare for the pageant to be staged at the Empire Pool, Wembley, on Sunday, March I1 (see left).

In the discussion that followed a number of people expressed their full support for the anti-Tory campaign.

At Wembley the South Wales contribution will be centred on the legal attack on the trade unions launched by the Tories at the turn of the century. This culminated in the Taff Vale judgement on the rail unions.

It was this court ruling, which imposed massive fines on the unions, that paved the way for the trade unions to build the Labour Party. Tonight on the Langley Estate, Middleton, near Manchester, the cabaret will stage a repeat performance.

FOOTNOTE: The arrival of the campaigners in Merthyr Tydfil was heralded by rumours and counter-rumours.

There was talk that Plaid pamy, intended breakint up she the Welsh nationalists' cabaret. • In the event none of these dire predictions came true.

Police in the audience seemed perturbed that the club had one Dewsbury and Batley, Yorks, said the North Eastern region.

Fitters were working to rule at Leeds, where half the men on the distribution side walked out.

Engineers at Hull were banning overtime and with fitters , were working to rule.

In Nottingham 400 workers have staged their second one-day strike in a week while men at Mansfield and Newark have decided to ban overtime. Only emergency calls were answered in Legal move will hit RENT REBEL councillors were in London yesterday taking legal advice over their decision to appeal against a fine of £6,985 for not Chairman of the council, Charles Bunting, said the move to appeal in the High Court against the order, imposed for persistent defiance of the Tory Housing Finance Act, did not mean the political campaign in the small Derbyshire mining community would be toned down. 'We have had community over SUPPORT for the monarchy was professed by Charalambos 1 Dracopoulos, secretary-general of the Greek Communist Party's 'Bureau of the Interior' , which broke from Moscow in 1968, when he appeared in an Athens court yesterday.

Dracopoulos, on trial for the third day with 16 others accused of plotting to overthrow the Greek regime by force, said that although the party was theoretically opposed to a crowned monarchy, it believed:

The King must return to Greece, form a government - of national unity and lead the country back to normal democratic rule.' IN AN Ankara trial the prosecutor claimed 187 alleged members of the Turkish Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Party aimed to overthrow the social and economic order and had set up cells specializing in sabotage. He demanded sentences for the accused of up to 15 years' imprisonment.

Communists did not want to overthrow the social order, he added. 'This would have been a tactical error at this stage in the country's political history.' Defence witness Elias Eliou. former spokesman of the banned EDA Party, also said that the Greek CP aimed at coming to Nottingham where pickets turned away a lorry loaded with spare parts from East Midlands Gas Board headquarters.

Shop stewards representing 3,000 gas industry manual workers Northumberland, Durham and Cumberland Newcastle tonight to discuss their ban on overtime and policy of nonco-operation.

The sanctions were imposed last week in protest against the pay increase offered by the Gas Corporation. putting up local council house rents.

tremendous support from the the last few days,' he said.

The desion to continue the so far fruitless legal battle was taken after a delegation of two councillors and local MP Tom Swain visited the Labour Party headquarters for advice on Tuesday.

A Labour Party spokesman said yesterday that the battle was now in the 'legal arena' and that the councillors now had a split policy of maintaining the political fight in the local community while appealing in the Hight Court.

After attending a meeting of the Clay Cross Labour group, Mr Swain said:

"The decision was unanimous. I don't care how long it takes, as long as we win. Obviously there is no precedent in the courts for this type of case and we have will take, no idea how long it The decision to continue the legal battle contains great dangers for the Clay Cross councillors and tenants.

The Labour Party leadership, which has given no support whatsoever to councils who have fought for party policy and defied the Act, clearly would like to get a political struggle at Clay Cross off the agenda.

Rent battle after rent battle has proven that the only means of opposing the Tory Act is to mobilize the working class of the area behind councillors, who take a stand.

Now Transport House wants to divert the struggle into the courts in the hope that the remaining resistance to the Act will evaporate.

Apart from Clay Cross, the only remaining centre of resistance is Conisborough, Yorkshire. In Scotland seven of the original 20 councils that defied the rent rises, are standing firm.